Rafflesia
by CarefulCrown
Summary: Team Seven was always an experiment, even Sakura. A ticking time bomb, a ticking nuke, an emotionally stunted sensei, and a vastly unprepared civilian girl. What's the worst that can happen? one-shots. CH.3 An Awful Lot of Running
1. The Experiment or This Shouldn't Work

Summary: Team Seven was always an experiment, even Sakura. Especially Sakura. No one knew what the effects would be of long term exposure to both the vile chakra of the Uchiha and the outright demonic chakra of the Kyuubi would have on a developing girl. They wanted to find out. A series of oneshots.

This is simply going to be a series of one shots focusing around team seven with the difference in the team being something about Sakura. I am a massive fan of the concept and theory of chakra and jutsu within the Naruto Universe, and am completely aware that there is some butchery of it in this. Frankly, this is for fun, and I'm not trying to be overly critical on the concepts.

Both this chapter, which is to serve as kind of a set up for all following one-shots, as well as the first one shot have not been edited as of yet. As soon as I have, I will update the story with those updated chapters.

#0 - Setting the tone

"So, what are our current options regarding the two boys?" A councilman asked still blinking sleep out of his eyes. The meeting had been called in a hurry in response to the passing of the Kyuubi's jinchuuriki. With the boy graduating, they'd be able to follow the original plan and pair the boys together, teaming them to be what could become one of the hardest hitting combat squads in the history of the village. The new information that the jinchuuriki had learned the _kage bunshin no jutsu, _as well as the magnitudes of clones he could make with it,had older shinobi salivating over the thought of the one man army. A couple of the more imaginative kunoichi were imagining an all-grown-up Naruto and what he could do with so many clones and salivating over something else entirely.

"Shouldn't we just pair the two together and be done with it?" another councilman asked, longing for the comfort of his bed. Of course, anyone who'd seen the two boys interact could immediately point out the giant, gaping hole in that plan. The harder hitting that team was, the harder it would be hitting _itself_. Naruto and Sasuke, together, _alone_, was a recipe for disaster any way you looked at it.

After a short silence, a new voice expressed a concern.

"Is it even safe to be between those two boys? They might be immune to the vile darkness of their powers, given their heritages and their burdens, but between the fox and the cursed Uchiha blood, their chakras, separate, let alone mixed would be a complete anomaly. What if it was harmful to whatever shinobi or kunoichi hopeful we put on their team?"

It was something that had been brought up when the Uchiha were still alive. Occasionally, the teammates of more powerful Uchiha would go insane, sometimes becoming a danger to themselves or those around them. During their descent, they would speak of hatred and darkness, and other such things that overly emotional teenagers talked about before causing themselves bodily harm while reaching out for attention. There was never any formal experiment conducted, more a casual observation, but that hadn't stopped, or even slowed the shift to teaming Uchiha mainly with Uchiha, a practice that furthered the feeling of separation within the village and deepened the rift with the Uchiha, perpetuating the cycle of hatred.

There was a muted murmuring in the room as people tried to wrap their minds around the thought. Those who had been present for the Kyuubi attack immediately understood the concern. While around the beast, it felt like a person's very soul was being corroded. Many of those closer to the front line had found themselves interned at one of Konoha's finer mental institutions.

"Well that leaves out clan heirs, then."

The statement was met by an immediate murmur of approval. It wouldn't do to jeopordize a bloodline child, let alone one of the many clan heirs that had just graduated, for the sake of some simple curiosity.

A member of the assembly suggested the purple-haired civilian girl from the other class, but that idea was shot down by the chuunin who had taught the boys. Apparently that team would have gotten along even worse than the two boys alone. The chuunin, however, did offer a solution.

"Put Haruno Sakura on the team," he said, "The girl, as of right now, is a civilian with no major clan affiliation, and she tries to do her best to get along with Sasuke, while Naruto does his best to get along with her. Not that either of those two endeavors have been particularly successful.."

"Then it's settled, team seven shall be Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, and Haruno Sakura, under the tutelage of Hatake Kakashi."

At this point the Hokage made his voice known to the group.

"You are all assuming that something will even happen due to exposure. That in itself is unheard of. As far as you know, the result could be nothing." The honorable Third Hokage declared.

Of course, the result could have also been _anything._

And there's a hell of a lot more humor in that.

There you go, that is the introduction to this collection of one-shots. I hope you enjoy what you may find here.

The edited version will be posted when it has been done.


	2. That's my Boy

Here's the first one shot, to get this collection rolling.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Told mostly with the focus on everyone's favorite ass-poking sensei, Hatake Kakashi

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#1 - That's my Boy

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The day that Kakashi first noticed it, he had written it off as his paranoid mind playing tricks on him to scare him. A mere year and a half later and he was cursing himself for not having taken the girl for immediate medical attention. The day that he saw what finally happened, he marched right into Tsunade's office, declared himself unfit as a jounin sensei, and resigned from the post. He even went as far as to suggest that he be brought in on charges of neglect of one of his students, recommending that he served jail time for his heinous neglect.

Anyone could see that the man was torn apart by the entire scenario. He kept on telling himself that he should have noticed sooner. Maybe he'd have been able to do something to stop it. Anything. He would have done anything.

To save himself.

Perhaps his resignation as jounin sensei of team seven would have been more reasonable if he still was the jounin sensei of the squad, which was by this point really more of an elite combat squad than anything else (though Naruto still was a genin).

Perhaps his suggestion of jail time would have been treated with more seriousness if he hadn't been suggesting it as a way to lock himself up safely. Safely away from _her._

It had started, in retrospect, shortly after the mission to protect Tazuna while he built his bridge. His student had always been a little _rough around the edges_, so to speak, and perhaps that was why he didn't immediately take her to a doctor.

Dattebane.

The word had haunted him since his childhood. Only used by one person so regularly. Used by her. Perhaps that was why he had been so thorough when stomping out Naruto's catchphrase.

In Kakashi's life, he had met plenty of women that others would call terrifying, but be it Mitarashi Anko, Yuuhi Kurenai, or even Inuzuka Tsume, he could never be scared or cowed by a single one of them. Not after having had his sensei's at-the-time girlfriend _look after him_ occasionally as a child. The Habanero lived up to her name, of that he was certain.

Apparently Minato-Sensei had used her chakra to build the seal that he had put on his son. He had left an imprint of her in the seal itself to help Naruto fight the Tailed Beast when the time came. Leave it to one demon to fight another.

She'd said the word once or twice, but aside from a mild bout of post traumatic stress he didn't really think all that much of it.

Datebane.

If that wasn't enough he really should have been clued in when Sasuke called her useless and she throttled him, laying punch after punch on his "pretty boy face", as she called it at the time.

When her hair had started growing in red, that was when he drew the line and scheduled his ritual suicide. Better to die with honor, of course. Kushina would leave him none of that. Of course, strictly speaking this wasn't Kushina, but rather a fusion of Sakura and Kushina. An obscene amount of rage, topped with teenage angst.

Wonderful. Exactly what he needed.

The current hypothesis was that, given the amount of time Sakura spent in close proximity with the blond jinchuuriki while he was blasting demon chakra, along with her similar personality, the chakra imprint of Uzumaki Kushina had made a connection with the girl. Just a bit at first, little flakes of chakra from the seal bleeding of into the energy Naruto exuded. However, as the connection was forged and the seal naturally weakened, more and more came through, faster and faster. By now he was fairly certain the entire imprint had disappeared from Naruto and become part of Sakura. For the silver-haired boy who had grown into a man fearing the color red, it was horrifying.

It wasn't all bad of course, Kushina was a great person, just terrifying, really. It was truly touching to see Sakura, strands of red running through her pink hair, already somewhat red at the roots, pull Naruto close and tell him that everything was going to be alright after Sasuke left, right before accompanying Naruto and dragging Sasuke back to the village, wrapped in chains (what was with those chains anyway? Chains out of pure chakra? Who had the energy for that? Oh, right. She was a former jinchuuriki-Uzumaki chakra cocktail). He had a feeling that it would have been the other way around had it not been for Kushina's imprint. The girl may have always been fiery, but he didn't think she had had quite the emotional strength to deal with her crush running away.

Not that Sasuke was her crush anymore, though.

He honestly wasn't sure if she even had one. A part of him hoped she didn't harbor any romantic feelings for her blond teammate, as that would have just made him feel awkward all or not, there was a whole level of wrong associated with the line of thought. But she treated Naruto more as his mother than anything else, and he seemed to have moved on from crushing on her, so that was good. It would have been awfully weird if Naruto started calling someone who looked like his mother "hot".

All of this had been scary for Kakashi, but not nearly so as the day he met her "inner Sakura".

While Kakashi had been assured that Sakura had always been a victim of a split personality, he was more than fairly confident that the "voice in her head" had not always been Uzumaki Kushina. Not a student that was very (nearly completely) Kushina-like. Kushina. The real deal. Meeting his sensei's woman the first time Sakura "let her out to play" had been an experience, to say the least.

Perhaps that statement needed rephrasing. Meeting his student's mother the first time Sakura "let her out to play" had been an experience, to say the least.

Thousand years of pain indeed. Considering that those were his -significantly younger- student's fingers up his rear, he was probably lucky that Konoha's laws were so behind, as that was certainly not a proper student-teacher relationship. In retrospect, it probably would have never gotten that far if there had been laws, as he would have gone , or at least been removed as a sensei after the incident with Naruto. Home free.

Perhaps it was time to change his job joice. He could see it now: Hatake Kakashi, legal reform advocate.

On second thought, it probably wouldn't have stopped her. Kushina had always had a determination horrifyingly similar to her child's. His apartment had been painted red more times than he could count since the change had started, but he didn't really mind that all that much. Not when compared to the time when he was young and had passed out at his sensei's house. Very few children would be as calm as he was if they woke up to find their privates missing. He had remained completely calm until he figured out that it wasn't a genjutsu.

Uzumaki seal-work was a bitch. He continued to use the past-tense in that way until he found out that Naruto had studied up on it during his training trip. Waking up without his junk was one thing. Waking up with his junk as a trophy on his wall was another entirely. He was pretty sure that Kushina had left all her notes to Naruto in her will, but she wasn't so forthcoming with the information.

To add insult to injury, Kakashi had been so certain that, as one of the current top elite jounin of Konoha, and without her having the Nine-Tailed Fox in her gut, he would have been able to beat her in a fight when Sakura let her out to play. He had no such luck. As Sakura had learned the secrets of Tsunade's super strength, so had her "inner Kushina". He had moved to hide underground to sneak up on the girl, only to find that there suddenly was no ground as Kushina made Konoha's newest lake in what used to be training ground number 6. And training ground number 7.

Lake Habanero was certainly a large one.

He had still to this day, one week later, never managed to get any slack from his female student after that. Especially since he had been knocked unconscious during the formation of the crater and nearly drowned when his Blond student, in a moment of inspiration, decided that it would make quite a fine lake. If he was uncomfortable with one of his students using that silly "forbidden taijutsu" technique on him, it was perhaps telling with how much more uncomfortable he was with his raven haired student giving him CPR, which he'd done under the threat of Uzumaki wrath.

All around Kakashi was having a pretty bad time teaching Team Seven. His books (limited edition, signed by the author) had been sealed away -presumably forever- with Uzumaki Blood Seals, the only variation in the color of anything in his apartment was the difference in the shade of red that it was painted -there were sixteen different shades of red in his apartment, with his cold water valves being painted a more vivid red than the hot, which still got him half the time-, His windows had been turned into one-way mirrors, with the one way being _in_, and all of his masks but the one on his face had been rigged to fall apart at the seams approximately one hour and twenty three minutes after he put it on his face (experimentally proven with a standard deviation of eleven point four seconds, Kakashi found). He was reaching the end of his rope and he didn't know what he could possibly do.

He wasn't the only one.

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"Psst, Kakashi," someone whispered in his ear, only to find a kunai at their throat. As Kakashi opened his eyes (one still under his sleeping eye patch which, he found, was a hell of a lot more comfortable than sleeping with a metal plate on your face), he found himself looking eye to eyes with his Uchiha team member.

"A, I know you achieved jounin a year ago, Sasuke, but you really should keep referring to me as 'Kakashi-sensei', or at the very least 'Kakashi-senpai', and B, What the hell are you doing in my home and why did you sneak in here?" Kakashi asked the boy, irritated at having been woken up.

"In response to A: Hn. In response to B, I'm here because Sakura and Naruto need to be stopped, this has gone too long. I have been woken up no less than six times tonight by six different academy children dressed up as Orochimaru, make-up and all, demanding my body."

"To be honest, Sasuke, that's not all that much, especially by their standards," the teacher replied. At this point Sasuke pulled down the hem of his shirt, revealing the side of his neck to be covered in bite marks, giving Kakashi a small laugh, which was met by a harsh glare from his student.

"I've been sexually assaulted by six children tonight. This ends now. I need to know if you're in or not."

"Maa, Whatever. I'll help if you've got a plan. God knows I've tried."

"Good. Here's what we're going to do..."

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"This plan seems a bit over-thought, don't you think, Sasuke?"

"No, why would you say that?" The young jounin asked as the pair fled the scene of the store on the corner of the street next to Kakashi's apartment, completing their loop of Konoha with all their loot stored securely in scrolls hidden in their pockets and holsters.

"Well, your plan has _phases_, Sasuke. Revenge plans this complicated always seem to blow up in our faces."

"Your face is covered anyway. What the hell do you care?"

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The letters had been sent to sent to both Sakura's and Naruto's homes, with it the declaration of Sasuke's intent. For added flair,the letter sent to Sakura had been sent with a child dressed as Jiraiya and quickly trained to act the part and the letter to Naruto's home had been sent with a child dressed as Tsunade, with a purple diamond drawn with marker on her forehead and a pair of balloons in her shirt. If nothing else, Kakashi was pretty sure he was going to hell for getting the children involved in this, but Sasuke had been very insistent. Something about poetic justice...

"You know, your plan has a couple of pretty glaring flaws," the silver haired man told his student, appraising him with his one eye while doing so.

"Like what?" the boy asked.

"What if they've already stockpiled enough to last them through this outage? That seems like a pretty likely scenario, to be perfectly honest. And what if they just decide to go to the stand to get some fresh? Its not like we can stop small scale production. Also, hate to not sound like a ninja here, but what if they call the police? " the teacher pointed out to his student.

"If they've stockpiled, we keep the outage going. They'll have to run out it'll be awfully hard for them to get it from businesses that I own. You clearly missed phase three-B, where I bought up the stand and every similar business in the city using the Uchiha money," the boy answered, " As for the police..." here the boy paused for a moment.

"I am the police."

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Kakashi was certain by now that he shouldn't have ever gone along with this plan. This plan of Sasuke's was not only convoluted, it was also insane. At best. At worst it was flat out suicide. The second those letters reached the homes of his other students, war would break out. The elemental countries would be rocked by the ensuing catastrophe. Landmarks would be altered. Civilizations would fall. Society would crumble. If he was lucky, hell wouldn't open up and swallow him whole for bringing about the end of days.

He had, after all, just stolen all of the ramen in Konoha and then proceeded to _tell _both Uzumaki Naruto and kind-of Kushina that he had done be honest, he was sure that Naruto would be more upset than Sakura/Kushina. She liked the food, and loved salt ramen, but she didn't require the stuff for sustenance like her kind-of son did. She would just help her "son" get his revenge for fun. That was, after all, pretty much her definition of fun.

Kakashi decided perhaps now was a good time to check all of his equipment to make sure that it was all in workable condition. After all, a war couldn't be fought with broken or poorly maintained weapons.

"You know, if you just wanted him to eat healthier things, there were probably easier ways. Much easier."

"Well, you know, this one just seemed kind of, well, epic, you know?"

"You do realize that it looks like he's actually going to end Kakashi's life, right? He's in sage mode, pumping Kyuubi's chakra like he's fighting off the apocalypse. Which he probably thinks he is."

"He'll get over it, I'm sure. He a good kid."

"He's firing off consecutive S-rank jutsu at Kakashi-_senpai_. Normal humans would be dead from even being around as much chakra as he's letting leak, not even counting the jutsu he's using."

"That's my boy, Dattebane."

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Those who abandon their comrades may be worse than trash, but those who cross Uzumaki women are dumber than rocks. Sasuke's already done it once, too...

It obviously needs a massive amount of work and editing. When I get around to fixing things, then I'll upload the edited version. Just trying to get a feel out here.

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and a quick omake:

"So you're saying that you're a chakra imprint of the Fourth Hokage, who also happens to be my dad, that you left behind to save me incase I went all fox-crazy?"

"Pretty much," the chakra construct responded.

"But since I conquered the Fox already, at the tender age of 12, I might add, you pretty much have nothing to do?"

"That's about the gist of it." the taller blonde replied. This had not been how he'd expected this conversation to go. Anger perhaps. Rage. At least some irritation. Instead he got confusion.

"And you still have a bunch of chakra stored for yourself, so you're not going away any time soon?"

"Well, I stored enough chakra to restore your seal, which is designed to contain the strongest beast known to man outside of myth, so there's actually quite a bit of chakra in here for me now that you didn't need my help, enough to last at least the rest of your lifetime. I kind of expected you to need my help. Dads are supposed to be able to bail their sons out of trouble at least once in their lives," the Fourth said, sounding actually disappointed that his son _hadn't_ flown into a homicidal demonic rampage.

"I don't believe you."

"What?" The older man asked, confused.

"That's so fucking broken."

"What do you mean?"

"You're telling me that, just because you leave some of your chakra in me, you can leave an imprint of yourself inside of me, through which we can converse and share information, or you can train me?" Naruto asked.

"Yeah, I suppose so."

"That's ridiculous. If that was possible why isn't everyone doing it? The ability to have your strongest shinobi train an entire future generation personally and we've never heard of anyone doing it? I'm sorry, but I just can't believe it."

"I sacrificed my soul to the damn death god, I can do whatever I damn well please. Now you will listen to me or I will tell your mother, got it, mister?"

"My mom's dead. You were there. From what I understand it was kind of a shitty experience all around."

"Oh. right. Would you like to learn a jutsu?"

"Would I ever!"

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Fin.


	3. An Awful Lot of Running

An Awful Lot of Running

Disclaimer: Obviously, I own none of this. Naruto is the property of Masashi Kishimoto-Sensei and any material referenced is the property of its respective rights holders.

I'm probably going to go back and combine the first and second chapters when I get the chance to edit them. Keeping the one-shots restricted to being about how team seven effected Sakura just felt too constraining, so now I think that I'll simply be writing one shots mainly focusing around team seven. There will be more one-shots based on that premise, but it won't be the entire focus. There just wasn't enough freedom for silly bullshit like this.

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As Sasuke stared Naruto down, he knew that something was different about his old friend. He'll, he'd known that a minute into the fight, or even before it started. It wasn't the ever present cloak of radiant chakra surrounding him, or the way he fought.

It was his eyes. Naruto had always had that look in his eyes that screamed of a fool's confidence, except for in those dire situations where the boy truly shined. Those were the eyes that he new sported constantly. And the were yellow with rectangular pupils. In retrospect, that was probably the more noticeable change in Naruto's eyes. They were cool, Sasuke could acknowledge that. But they weren't _sharingan_ cool. Sasuke highly doubted Naruto's new eyes would be able to summon giant death armors, burning with hellfire, while he used them to torture his opponent for days in the course of a second. He could only imagine how peeved he would be if there turned out to be _another_ set of eyes that could do all those things.

Man, he remembered when people were calling his ability to use his eyes to copy ninjutsu ridiculous and unfair.

War had refined the rough material that was the kyuubi's host from an over-confident fool into a true force to be reckoned with. Maybe they would both die in this battle. Sasuke found that the thought didn't actually bother him all that much. War was hell, and both of these young men had lived through the worst of it. They had watched helpless as people that they loved died or writhed in agony. Or in Sasuke's case, watched, pretty much apathetic, while people Naruto loved died or writhed in agony. War had changed them. The two were monsters of shinobi now. Two of the most powerful humans alive. Granted, there were quite a bit fewer of those, but they were both pretty certain they were stronger than pretty much all of the red-shirts.

Trained by Tobi, Sasuke had learned much of the secrets of the sharingan. Its abilities over time and space were, in Sasuke's eyes, pretty broken. Sasuke could only imagine what sort of ridiculous powers the Senju must have had for there to ever have been a rivalry. They must have been pretty bad-ass if they could counter control over reality. Maybe Naruto would be able to pull some of those sort of powers out of his ass to fight Sasuke. In a way, Sasuke almost hoped he would. If nothing else it would add a bit of entertainment to his day if all of the sudden Naruto whipped out some ridiculous ability that nobody had ever heard of. Except everyone would have heard of it so that when the one ignorant person watching saw it, other onlookers could describe the technique and its effects perfectly, and admire it in how legendary it was.

The fight had started off pretty average. The two had launched repeated high-class techniques at each other, trying to catch the other off guard. The terrain had been deformed, reformed, then deformed again. The earth was shaking for miles. Animals ran into buildings where the proceeded to hide under tables and quiver in fear. Babies developed post traumatic stress disorder all across the world. The rotational speed of the Earth was increased, making the day twenty-four hours long instead of the twenty-five that the elemental nations had always known. Cracks formed in the seamless, perfect crust of the Earth, shifting continents apart slowly in a process that would take millions of years. Entire species of animals went extinct. The O-zone layer was thinned to the point where the sun's rays started becoming slightly harmful to humans.

Average meant something different when you were talking about a battle between two monsters of their power.

Then Sasuke decided to start using the powers that had been taught to him by Tobi. He was shocked to find that Naruto could simply headbutt him out of intangibility. That wasn't how that was supposed to work. He was supposed to have to be clever and trick Sasuke tangible. Sasuke had already gone as far as to assume that Naruto would have no problem with that, being the tricky devil of a prankster he'd been. But nooooo, instead he just broke reality. Just like Naruto to break the rules. And time-space. What a dick.

And that was when things started getting weird. Trippy hallucinations weird, but without the trippy hallucinations. The first indication that something was up was when Sasuke launched a fireball at Naruto the size of a small mountain and watched as it moved towards the blond at a rate so slow that thwarting fireball should have dissipated into the air. Then Naruto started moving in reverse, while Sasuke's world turned upside down and began to spiral "down" a drain that was a hole in reality somewhere behind the blond Uzumaki. If Sasuke was asked at that moment to describe it, he wouldn't have. He was an Uchiha, and that would require talking. And not about angst.

This was the scene that Sakura arrived to. Although, for her, colors were inverted the moment she got within five hundred yards of the battle. It was awfully lucky for the boys that she was there, because the two probably wouldn't have stopped fighting when reality literally cracked in the middle of their fight. Seeing the hole fracture in all of time and space, Sakura immediately started trying to mend it with her abilities as a medical ninja as best possible. Despite the glaring difference between apocalypses and people, the pink haired woman did a commendable job, but alas, just as the crack was about to close fully, the three ninja found themselves pulled into the unknown.

Then the crack sealed up. Shitty how that works sometimes.

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Hashirama panted from exertion. He was tired, why did Madara have to summon that damned Nine-Tailed Fox now? Could't they just go home and eat? Mito was making ramen for dinner, and Hashirama was sure she wouldn't have minded setting out an extra bowl. Ramen was the Uzumaki specialty after all. An Uzumaki without ramen was a dying Uzumaki. Legend had it that if an Uzumaki was to cut back on ramen, their hair would turn white and they would become sociopathic, and while Hashirama didn't necessarily buy that myth, he wouldn't exactly argue against it either.

As he got ready to exercise his Senju blood to take control of the beast, the air in front of him cracked and three teenagers popped out of the sky, two of them emitting energy levels that rivaled those of his and Madara's. The blond one was the first to speak.

"What the hell Kurama? How'd you get out there. Hey, chill out man, stop looking at me with those angry sharingan eyes. Wait, what?"

Apparently this statement was sufficient to break break the age old kitsune from Madara's control, after which the fox looked on in confusion seemingly at least equal to the confusion that Hashirama felt at the moment. Then the blond boy spoke again.

"Oh fuck! Madara?"

This was the only warning either of the two Konoha founders received before what Hashirama could only describe later as a screeching ball of wind based death the size of a person shredded Uchiha Madara, still shocked over the appearance of the three children and his loss of control over the beast he'd just exhausted himself summoning, limb from limb. Then cell from cell. Then atom front atom. Hashirama couldn't even make out the fine blood-mist he'd have expected from such a technique. It was that thorough. And that was a ranged technique? That was just unreal. Kids these days. Next thing you knew shinobi would sending meteors at enemies. Why did all the kids think that flashy techniques were the bomb? So thought the man known for growing forests on a whim for techniques.

Then the pink haired one spoke.

"What the fuck, Naruto!"

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"Do you know what causality is, Naruto?" she asked, slapping her open palm to her forehead. This was bad. They were in what would become the Valley of the End, she'd figured that much out. Given what had led up to them getting here, she had decided to willingly suspend her disbelief of time travel. However, Madara had been the reason they'd been engaged in the fight that got them here and the reason they'd been able to fight at their levels in the first place.

"Of course I do, Sakura-chan."

"Well, you just murdered causality."

"Of course I did. That's circle logic, Sakura-chan. He wouldn't have been a casualty if I hadn't killed him. Actually, now that I think about it, every time i kill someone, it's an Uchiha. Well, an Uchiha Madara. Does that make me a bad person? Like, you know, prejudiced? Against Uchiha? Or Madaras?" Naruto answered, scratching his chin in thought.

Naruto had grown as a person during the war. no one had said he gotten _smart_.

Sakura screamed louder at that moment than she ever had in her life.

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Sasuke felt like he was dying. It felt like his insides were on fire. It was like Sakura had punched him in the gut with every bit of that, to be quite frank, brutish strength of hers. That's how hard it was for him to breath.

He was laughing _that_ hard.

Naruto had just, in his first minute in the past, caused a paradox that would, had he not been the kind of person that simply _could_ go beyond the impossible and kick reality to the curb. That was just who Naruto was. This entire situation was, in itself, likely to cause a split in reality. That had to be a record for damage caused during a one on one fight. Any fight for that matter. Fight to the death be damned, he just couldn't work up the will to even want to fight his rival. Not with the level of ridiculous he was dealing with right now.

In the meanwhile they were probably about to get arrested. If there was anyone in the workday who could, it was certainly Senju Hashirama, who seemed to be getting over his shock. As was the red-haired woman off to the side of the new valley. Or the gray haired man who simply hadn't been there and was just arriving at the scene . Shit, that was Tobirama, wasn't it? Well, at least the two of them had no way of knowing that he was a missing ninja, and he was sure that Naruto and Sakura weren't about to tell the man. Or his wife. Or his brother, who, due to Naruto breaking reality, may or may not go on to become the second Hokage.

Oh, thinking of that, that meant that Danzo was probably still alive. If Naruto could get away with raping reality, Sasuke was sure reality would cut him some slack as well. The child Danzo wasn't guilty of anything yet, but that never stopped Sasuke. Worst came to worst he could just make the kid super-miserable. Tsukuyomi on children was ethical. It built character. Sasuke could attest.

As their ancestors approached them, questioning looks on two of their faces and a confused one on the third, Sasuke could only wish his eyes could predict how those was going to go.

###%##%#####%%######

After introductions, during which Naruto was really psyched to meet "another Uzumaki" , a statement which confused Mito (there are plenty of Uzumaki and you sure don't look like one, young man). Hashirama could in no way say that he was any less confused than he was before the talking started. Probably more confused, in fact. These kids thought that they were from the future where they had fought in some sort of end-war. The blond had muttered something about the war being started by a "not-Madara" and something about a zombie Madara with his face...

Hashirama had a jutsu for growing a near infinite supply of cannabis, and he still didn't think it would be enough to get him on these kids' level. It was at that point that everyone remembered the figurative elephant in the room. More specifically, the giant demon fox in the room. When it roared. Damnit, it was angry and it was hungry and if these fleshbags wanted tp be dinner instead of running away that was their problem.

It was during the ensuing battle that Hashirama began to slightly believe the boys in that they were powerful. Specifically when the blond started glowing golden and boxing with the strongest of the tailed beasts while it tried, with tried being the operative word, to eat the boy.

On the way back to the village, which the three teens had known the way to as if by heart, Hashirama got the children's names, so that he wouldn't have to call them stupid one, quiet one, and angry one in his head any longer.

"So, how do you three intend to make a living, now that you're here?" he asked the children, hoping to perhaps gain some valuable information from them regarding themselves. People often enjoyed talking about themselves when prompted, a would let slip fairly useful tidbits of information that they otherwise would have kept to themselves. He was sure he wouldn't get all that much from the Uchiha, because, realistically, if he said more than fifteen words the entire trip back to the village, he would probably trigger some sort of Uchiha sharingan bloodline ability. They always seemed to have so many of those. Hashirama was almost certain the Uchiha could unlock some ridiculous advancement to their bloodline by murdering their puppy while eating waffles, but village politics prevented him from ever saying that to anyone but himself.

"well, I was thinking I might go back home, pick up some supplies and stuff, and then try out this whole 'being in the far past' thing," Naruto told the man, eliciting odd looks from all of the assembled company, including his own companions, who recovered quicker so that they could inform the boy of his idiocy and the impossibility of his plan. Sakura decided to break it to him easily rather than insult the jinchuuriki in what was probably just as trying a time for him as it was for her.

"Uhm, Naruto... How exactly do you plan on going back? It's not like you can seal yourself away until our time, come out, nearly cause the apocalypse again, and then come out here," she said, hoping that those were not things that he planned to do, because she knew none of those would turn out well.

"Oh no, of course not. I was just going to use the Hiraishin and flash home." This statement of course confused the girl further. It was turning out to just be one big day of confusion for all assembled, particularly those who couldn't figure out how the boy intended to use a lightning rod to travel through time...

"It's a space-_time_ ninjutsu. Duh," Naruto said as if that explained anything.

"And that's supposed to mean that if a seal exists somewhere in time, you can travel to it at that point in time?"

No one knew it yet, though Hashirama suspected it, but in asking that question and speaking fifteen consecutive words without gloating, specific prompting, or describing a convoluted master plan, Sasuke had activated an ability of the Sharingan unseen to any prior Uchiha. After trying the power once, Sasuke would never use the ability again.

Flying was pretty awesome, but not when you had a sparkling rainbow trailing behind you like some sort of flamboyant cape. Enough people thought he was into men as it was.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"Well, yeah..." Naruto answered his ex-teammate.

"So why did you never go back and save all of the friends of yours that died during the war?" Sasuke asked.

"Are you out of your mind?" Naruto asked, "You can't cross your own timeline! That would be insanity!" Once again Naruto made bold statements that really only made sense to himself. His teammates took the statement to mean that he couldn't travel to any point in time where he existed, which was, for all intents and purposes, the simple truth of it. "Be right back, guys."

With that Naruto dropped one of his kunai before disappearing in a yellow flash, only to reappear almost instantly with a large scroll strapped to his back and a red-haired girl over his shoulder. A quick katon jutsu from Sasuke quickly incinerated the scroll on Naruto's back.

"Damnit, Sasuke! I spent like three hours looting your ancestral home for all the stuff that was in that scroll so that I could bring it to you!"

The look on Sasuke's face as he realized what he'd just burnt was entirely worth the three hours that he'd spent sealing everything from Sasuke's childhood bedroom into a very obvious and conspicuously large scroll that he could put on his back. It was then that his captive chose to speak.

"Would someone mind explaining to me what's going on? One minute I'm enjoying my lovely prison cell - it's my fifth by the way in case anyone here lost track - and the next moment I'm being taken on a lovely looting of Sasuke's childhood bedroom - lovely diary, by the way - and the next I'm teleported to who knows where. What's the deal?" The girl, who Sasuke could now very easily identify as Karin demanded of the group. Something told Sasuke that the girl may have still been a bit miffed with him, if the way she looked at him was any indication.

"Family vacation," Naruto told her. Apparently this was enough explanation for her. Naruto was the current head of the Uzumaki clan, by the fact that none would oppose him if nothing else.

"Ah, ok. Where to?" She asked.

"The founding of Konoha. Hey don't give me that look. Are you okay? Guys, I think I might have broken her. Oh, and I think we created a parallel timeline. Nothing really seemed different back home."

#################################

Karin was okay eventually, after getting an explanation from the only female member of team 7. She didn't appear shocked at all that Naruto and Sasuke had broken time, or that Naruto was harboring a potential time travel technique that he'd been using to get from the couch to the fridge or to the bathroom without effort. Sasuke wasn't surprised by that either, though. He himself happened to have been using Amaterasu for barbecue.

He really like the way he could get a fully cooked outside, with an almost raw, but still cooked center in an instant with the demonic hellfire produced by his eyes. Besides, it tasted more evil that way.

Naruto had disappeared the moment that they got to the village, and it had been an hour. Sakura was starting to get worried that Naruto had gotten lost. This wasn't like the grocery store. She couldn't have them put out an announcement over the intercom if he got lost because a particularly colorful cartoon on a box of cereal had caught his eye.

However, he must not have spotted anything shiny, because he returned with a triumphant grin. And then he handed them all apartment keys. They were in business.

##################################

Karin found the accommodations to be more the adequate if a bit... dated. Even if they were brand new. The apartment had all of the amenities that she could have needed. Certainly more than a prison cell. The walls were painted a pleasant though somewhat boring creme, which she figured that she could fix if she found it bothering her too much. The kitchen, as well as being equipped with all of the niceties, was large enough to comfortably seat six people. It had a new (again, if old-fashioned to her) stove, refrigerator, sink, and polished stone counter tops. The floors were all either polished hardwood or a soft creme carpet, with the exception of the tile bathroom. There was more closet space than she had ever had in her life, a very spacious bedroom, already fully equipped with a mahogany bedroom set, and even a spare room. She didn't even know what one was supposed to do with a spare room. Shinobi and Kunoichi didn't get those.

The moral of the story is that this place must have cost a pretty penny, and Naruto had just bought four. With that in mind she walked out of her apartment and across the hall to the door Naruto had told her was his. She wanted to know how much he had dropped on these four apartments. Knocking, she hear him yell from somewhere in the apartment that he'd be at the door in a minute. Forty-four seconds later he answered his door and she got a look into his apartment. It looked much too large. Significantly larger than her own spacious accommodations. That's when she realized: she hadn't seen any other residents of the building. Had Naruto purchased the entire building?

The answer turned out to be yes. He had. He had sold the First Hokage's necklace in the future (wouldn't do for two to exist at the same time, after all) and used a small fraction of the earnings to buy this building. Before they'd been brought to the building by him, his clones had been converting all of the apartments with the exception of Sakura's, Sasuke's, and her own into a single super massive appartment, complete with indoor swimming pool, bowling alley, casino, three bars, and no less than six hot tubs. When Sakura found out, she was going to smack Naruto upside the head. In the meantime, Karin was going to enjoy herself with one of those hot tubs. Prisons rarely had such relaxing amenities after all.

The head of her clan knew how to live, that was for sure. He just didn't know shit about picking his friends. But that was just her personal opinion.

After Sakura had finished beating on Naruto for what she called "spending money that could easily have been used for their survival" buying himself more apartments than he knew what to do with (despite the fact that it was obviously _his _money). Naruto thought that those accusations were baseless. He knew exactly what to do with all of that space, and would be having a blast when his worker clones finished his third tennis court, at which point he'd be able to host the doubles tennis tournament that he'd always dreamt of. And she wouldn't be allowed to compete. Not in the putt putt tournament either. Then maybe she'd feel bad about getting on his case.

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Naruto hadn't particularly care what they did with their rooms. As far as he was concerned, what they decided to live in was their own business. That said, he expected Sasuke's room to be painted black. Hell, he almost expected Sasuke to feel in some way slighted by the apartment, upon which he would likely declare revenge upon it. He would have been surprised then, to find that Sasuke had decided the creme wasn't calming enough, and had painted his entire apartment a calming mint green.

Until a spot dripped onto the floor. Then he declared revenge upon it and painted the entire room black in retaliation against the green.

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When Hashirama got irritated, the wooden objects around him started to splinter. It was a terrible habit, really. One that he really meant to stop. When the Shodaime Hokage walked into his office to find everything painted a bright orange, it was said that desks and dressers as far away as the Water Country splintered setting in an irrational fear of shinobi with unnatural powers granted to them by their blood. That's a story for a different time though. Now is the time for the story of how Naruto traveled back to the future, became the Hokage, and granted himself time-traveling diplomatic immunity within the Village Hidden in the Leaves. It pissed Hashirama off a little bit. Okay, it pissed the Senju off a lot. Even more than Tobirama did for the way he had yet to win a bet on a sporting event against the blond (if Tobirama couldn't figure it out for himself, he didn't deserve his brother telling him).

If someone had told him that this was going to be how his day would go, Hashirama would have stayed in bed. However, the real nightmare began when Mito mentioned the Ramen that she was planning to make for dinner. The look in that kid's eyes at the mention of the dish simultaneously convinced the Senju of two things. One: the boy _was_ an Uzumaki, and two: he wouldn't be getting rid of these children at any time in the near future.

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While Sakura applied for a job as a practitioner of medicine, Sasuke decided that he would get rich quick and easy. With his knowledge of the future, Sasuke could easily invest in businesses that he knew were going to succeed. If only he could invest in murder...

Killing was Sasuke's business, and business was good, though he supposed it would slow a bit given that he was no longer a free-roaming sociopath, but was living in a "stable" environment.

Sasuke would go on to invest in companies that he remembered being successful in his own time. While theoretically sound, Sasuke soon found himself the unfortunate victim of the butterfly effect when the business owners, seeing that they had an Uchiha on their side, thought that they were protected and began heavily cooking the books, causing their own businesses to fail not too far down the road. After that black mark, Sasuke didn't have all that much money left to reinvest in the market, and no one wanted to do business with him anymore. Years down the road, the Nidaime, who was somehow still Tobirama, would instate him as a shinobi, whereupon he would stop having to bum food off of Naruto. Sasuke was then appointed sensei to Shimura Danzo. Sasuke was rather nonplussed with this until he realized all of through things he could get away with. Kakashi _had_ taught him something sweet after all.

Danzo would go on to not become the leader of a private military organization that operated under the nose of the Hokage, though he would still mysteriously lose the use of his arm and one of his eyes on a routine mission to clean used weapons out of an academy practice field. On blunt weapons day. They say that he would jump at any sudden noise for the rest of his life, right up until the day he died. Of an electrical overload on his heart's sino-atrial node. This happened the day before he tried to arrange the genocide of the Uchiha. They hadn't been planning a coup, Danzo just thought that the Uchiha were a threat to all life. No one knows where he got that idea.

Karin, due to her Uzumaki heritage, outlived all of the non-Uzumaki people that she knew. She found this to be extra fun when she got the chance to speak at Sasuke's funeral, forever planting in people's minds that the man had had illicit relationships with cats and dogs. She never really bothered getting a job or working, instead bumming off of the Uzumaki clan (Naruto). He never really minded all that much and there was even a rumor that the two had a thing. Of course, there was also a rumor that he had a thing with Sakura. And the clerk from his favorite grocery store. And the wife of the chef at his favorite ramen-stand (that was one of the only two rumors he ever bothered to deny, not wanting to strain his relationship with Ichiraku Teuchi. Besides, those two were quite a bit younger than him, and she hadn't been very old when she'd had her daughter Ayame). And of course, no one could forget the rumor that he had a thing going on with Sasuke (the other denied rumor).

Naruto, meanwhile, had start business. Using the unlimited workforce provided to him by clones, Naruto started a contracting business. If you had a job you needed done, Naruto was your man, and he'd do it for the cheapest price around. He turned a massive profit, as his payroll was essentially nothing. So successful was he that Konoha eventually bought him out so that there would be D-rank missions again. His terms had been a rather large lump sum of cash, more than enough to live comfortably, and "re"-instatement as one of Konoha's ninja for himself and his teammates. He would go on to be the third Hokage, beating out Sarutobi for the spot and starting village wide casual Fridays, mostly so that he could get out of the hat an coat (which had been dyed orange) and into something more comfortable, which he wouldn't have to worry about ramen stains on. After the extinction of the Uzumaki clan, Naruto would again declare himself its head, pissing off a little red haired girl named Kushina, who Naruto was convinced had issues. When he handed the hat down to his father, he looked just as young as the Namikaze, prompting rumors that he was beyond the longevity of the dead Uzumaki clan, but instead altogether immortal. The truth of this statement has yet to be confirmed or disproved.

Comparatively, Sakura led a pretty normal life and didn't really change all that much. Go figure.

##############################################

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually—from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint—it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly... timey-wimey... stuff.

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For the record, I don't care how much of a jump you have on Uchiha Madara, the man is seriously god level. It would take at the least all of Naruto's main character overcome anything superpower to fight him, and even then he'd probably just lose and learn some sort of valuable lesson. Madara is no fucking joke. If anything it shows just how obscenely powerful Hashirama was. A master of _everything_. Seriously, Madara can lol-pwn all of the five current kage. After those Kage beat down sever. Pretty much effortlessly. That statement goes in both directions. The guy, though he would regenerate, took the strongest technique of the oldest kage just to demoralize his opponents by showing them just what they were dealing with. There has yet to be a point in that battle where the five kage were doing any better than getting their asses kicked.

Also, anyone else think it's interesting that the doujutsu possessed by the ancestor of the Uchiha in the flashback was a spiral? Or that Tobi, after implanting the Rinnegan, is capable of using chakra chains with the ability to restrain Bijuu, a lot like Kushina?

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For anyone who actually doesn't know this chapter was titled as it was as a reference to the television show Doctor Who, which is a wonderful show to watch if you want to stab your productivity in the back with a rusty knife. And then shoot it. Double-tapped, just to be safe. Then disrespect its body.

Some silly little snippets coming from the naming of this chapter:

######?

As Madara stood atop the head of the fox, staring down at his nemesis, he finally felt like this fight was going his way. It wouldn't be too long before Hashirama was either dead or had finally accepted that he was stuck with the Hokage position. He had been elected to it after all. But no, The Senju had, immediately post election, started trying to guilt Madara into taking the position off his hands. Finally, Madara told him that if he asked one more time, Madara would leave the village. Hashirama lasted all of three days before he asked again. Madara didn't really want to leave, but he wasn't about to lose face either.

As he and his greatest rival squared off. A weird noise started repeating through their new valley, getting louder and louder with each repetition. It was not a noise that the Uchiha could even begin to describe. Oddly enough, the Kyuubi was the first to speak.

"Is someone trying to drive their phonebooth with the brakes on?" The fox asked.

Madara didn't know what any of those words meant, but the fact that the noise got Kyuubi to speak non threatening words gave the Uchiha reason for pause.

##########

"FU-SION-HA!"

"Hey, dumbasses, that's not going to work. Why are you even tr- oh holy shit, what the fuck?"

Sakura watched as the smoke cleared and the dramatic music faded away (slowly and dramatically) to reveal a single being. A mess (although probably one of the most carefully arranged messes she'd ever seen) of brown hair sat upon this man's head. He wore a dark blue suit with tiny off color pinstripes. Over this was a brown overcoat and, on his feet, making his image just a bit odder, was a pair of sneakers. Tennis shoes. Trainers. And not even the nice kind. The cheaply made ones that civilian teenagers with too much money spent way too much on to look cool. With a suit.

"Who are you?" She asked, scared of the answer.

"I'm the doctor," the man responded, as if offended that she hadn't already known that.

Sasuke and Naruto were difficult enough to deal with separately. Sakura was leaving now. She was not getting pulled into this. No way. She had way too many sick days saved up at the hospital. She was going to use them and go on a vacation. Somewhere far far away. Maybe if she froze herself for a hundred years, they would be unable to get her...

Nope.

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I hope that all of you had a good time reading this and hope that you all review with what you liked, what you didn't like, any mistakes you noticed, and any suggestions. Thank you for reading.

Enjoy the weekend everyone and don't drink too much. Just kidding, drink everything.


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